Less than two years after leaving IBM to join Apple, Mark Papermaster has left his post as head of iPhone hardware. If you recall, IBM sued Papermaster in an attempt to keep him from joining Apple and divulging trade secrets, which was later settled after Papermaster testified in court that he partook in no such nonsense.

If you’ve made your way through the iPhone’s App Store, you’ve no doubt noticed several apps being sold for a certain price alongside a “lite” version of the same app. It’s more or less a feature-restricted version of the app meant to entice you to buy the full version.

Shark Fact Of The Day:

Orcas are the only natural predator of the great white shark, but humans are the worst threat to this species, which has finally earned government protection in many of the areas in which this species is found.

Up Front:

Ah yes, more Apple rumors. About as dependable in frequency as they are undependable in accuracy, they must all be reported no matter what. This latest round comes from iLounge, who cites a “highly reliable source” while cautioning us to “take this report with the requisite grains of salt.” They do pretty good work over there at …

If you’re a MobileMe subscriber and use Apple’s cloud-based iDisk service, the latest mobile version allows you to stream music files from your storage space directly to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. That update was pushed out about a month ago and made some headlines as people began to ponder whether Apple was paving the way for …

This is bizarre. Clearwire is positioning its iSpot 4G hotspot device towards owners of portable Apple products. The iSpot costs $100 regularly, though it’s on sale today for $29. There’s no two-year contract needed and service costs just $25 per month as long as you’re in a Clear 4G coverage area.

CNET is reporting that an unexpected video feature is currently holding up Apple’s rumored cloud-based iTunes rollout. What’s interesting about this story is that Apple hasn’t said a word about their acquisition of Lala and CNET is saying that its implementation is somehow delayed.

Well this is interesting. Back in April, Sprint caused a bit of buzz by promoting an iPad case that converted a built-in superfast 4G data connection into a Wi-Fi signal for use with up to five devices. The idea was that you could plop your Wi-Fi iPad into the case and use Sprint’s connection for data on the go.

Safari 5 is now available to download for Mac and PC. Apple’s latest iteration of its web browser brings with it a few new features; most notably, extensions. There’s also a new feature called Safari Reader, which pops news articles open in their own overlay while darkening the background of the rest of the page (see the image …